When choosing a career, we often focus on the outcome. Take being a doctor, for example. The outcome of being a doctor is incredibly rewarding: curing patients and helping others, good income, high social status.

However the process of being a doctor involves years of education and internships, night shifts and hospital environment, and constant exposure to sickness. For many, the process is far from enjoyable, and they end up regretting their decision because they focused solely on the outcome.

What if your job hasn’t been invented yet?

I spent ten years of my career building mobile apps — a job that didn’t even exist before 2007, when the iPhone was introduced. Fun fact: when the iPhone first launched, you couldn’t even install apps. Now it’s hard to imagine life without them.

Take “influencers” or social media managers, for instance. These jobs didn’t exist 20 years ago, they became possible with the rise of platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Driving through rows of auto repair shops this summer, we arrived at a quirky ice cream shop in Ayvalık. Tasked with picking flavors for the family, I defaulted to my usuals—chocolate, vanilla, coconut, blackberry. But the owner interrupted, suggesting tahini as one of his favorites.

Tahini? Not a flavor I would have picked myself but out of politeness and a bit of spontaneity, I said yes.

Back home, as we sampled the flavors, tahini turned out to be the clear winner: perfecly balanced, nutty and creamy. If I had stuck to my classics, I would have missed the best flavor.

Gratitude doesn’t come naturally to me.

When it comes to practicing gratitude, one approach is thinking of people less fortunate. I try to avoid comparing myself to others — it doesn’t resonate with me because I struggle to empathize in that way. Instead, I’ve found it much easier to use myself as the reference point.

I also find it difficult to identify positive aspects of my life. For me, it is easier to think of the negative: what could be worse!

In my 20s, I would brush my teeth twice a day and still get cavities. This went on for years and was incredibly frustrating. By my 30s, I learned that brushing alone isn’t enough, food can still get stuck between your teeth. When I started flossing every night, the cavities stopped. It made a huge difference.

Cavities were gone but I would wake up with morning breath and a bad taste in my mouth. Professional cleanings every six months helped for a while, but the problem always came back. Towards my 40s I learned that I need to brush and scrape my tongue as well, because the tongue acts like a bacteria sponge, collecting residue from everything I eat. When I started using a metal tongue scraper every night, it significantly reduced my morning breath.

One practice I’ve incorporated in my life from Getting Things Done framework and Inbox Zero philosophy is creating a section in Gmail for emails that I need to revisit and can’t process right away.

I label them with a [todo] tag and they appear at the top of my inbox:

Automatically works on mobile too! This way, I don’t need to keep emails as Unread. Here’s how you can configure this:

I’ve learned the hard way that some lifestyles I desired were not my own desires, they were things I absorbed from others. These ideas were planted in my brain without me noticing like they do in the movie Inception.

There is the idea of mimetic desire by French philosopher René Girard. He argues human desires are not entirely individual but are imitative by nature — we desire things because we see others desiring them. For example, a child might not want a specific toy until they see another child playing with it. I’ve absorbed desires from the internet and those around me, and I’ve realized how difficult it is to separate mimetic desires from intrinsic ones.

Reflecting back on my career, the most significant benefits I gained at each step were often far from what I anticipated. In many cases, they were things I couldn’t have predicted going down that path. This realization challenges the idea of planning life solely through logic and reason.

When I started my master’s degree at Georgia Tech, I assumed the biggest advantage would come from the knowledge I gained, the connections I made, or the credential boosting my job prospects. Instead, the most profound impact was on immigration—not to the U.S., but to the UK. My graduate degree allowed me to meet UK’s point-based immigration requirements for a work visa. Working in the UK eventually led me to Facebook, a major turning point in my career. Interestingly, when I applied to graduate school, I had no plans to move to the UK or pursue immigration elsewhere.

Bazen zihnimiz bize tüm elverişli şartların bir araya gelmesini beklemek gibi bir tuzak kuruyor. Ve çoğu zaman, bir engel gördüğümüz için harekete geçmekten vazgeçiyoruz. Oysa yol, yola çıktığımızda beliriyor. Geçenlerde yaşadığım sıradan iki olay bana bu gerçeği hatırlattı:

• Kanyon’da üç arkadaş kahve içeceğiz. Kahveci tamamen dolu, oturacak tek bir masa bile yok. İnsan, böyle anlarda “Boş ver, başka yere gidelim,” diyebiliyor. Öyle yapmadık, “Bir şekilde hallolur” dedik ve sıraya girdik. Siparişimizi verip kahvelerimizi alana kadar iki masa boşalmıştı.

Sümerolog Muazzez İlmiye Çığ’ı yakın zamanda 110 yaşında kaybettik. Bu nedenle geçen yıl aldığım, Büşra Sanay’ın kendisiyle yaptığı söyleşi kitabı “Yaşadım Demek için Ne Yapmalı?“yı okudum.

Bu kitapta, yaşamın anlamını bulmak, hayatı nasıl yaşamalı, kendini geliştirme, insan ilişkileri, kariyer, kadın olmak, Türkiye’nin gelişimi ve Sümeroloji gibi konular üzerine bir söyleşi okuyoruz. Büşra Sanay sorularıyla derinlemesine bir sohbet gerçekleştirmiş ve ortaya çok iyi bir iş çıkarmış.